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Paying Attention to the Alien: Reevaluating Composition Studies' Construction of Human Agency in Light of Secret Government Surveillance

Maynard, David Charles

Abstract Details

2017, Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing​, University of Findlay, English.
Since the advent of digital composing methods, scholars of first-year writing have produced research exploring the implications of digital writing instruction for writing professionals and students. However, despite extensive consideration of how digital writing instruction may perpetuate societal inequalities, little scholarship has explored how the government’s digital surveillance of citizens may jeopardize writing studies’ understanding of human agency and its mission to preserve student agency even as students interact with increasingly complex, networked digital interfaces. In the following thesis, I address this gap by examining available information regarding the NSA’s surveillance of web users and the role web companies such as Microsoft play in such surveillance. Furthermore, I review composition studies scholarship that examines the implications of the digital interface for writing instruction, scholarship that has recently grown concerned with the potential for the government to exploit networked digital interfaces as a means of surveilling users. I suggest that Cynthia Selfe’s argument to writing professionals to pay attention to their technology use reinscribes a democratic humanist vision of agency. Furthermore, I suggest that the correlation of paying attention with increased agency limits scholars’ understanding of the insidious, secretive nature of government surveillance as an alien object that resists understanding. Ultimately, I present alien phenomenology as an alternative theoretical lens through which scholars may pay attention to government surveillance without assuming that doing so will increase the agency of writing professionals or students. Finally, I suggest that by paying attention to government surveillance through the lens of alien phenomenology, scholars may consider the possibility that agency is not a sustainable category as writing professionals and students engage with networked digital interfaces implicated in government surveillance.
Christine Denecker, PhD (Committee Chair)
Ronald Tulley, PhD (Committee Member)
Megan Adams, PhD (Committee Member)
Christine Tulley, PhD (Advisor)
166 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Maynard, D. C. (2017). Paying Attention to the Alien: Reevaluating Composition Studies' Construction of Human Agency in Light of Secret Government Surveillance [Master's thesis, University of Findlay]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=findlay149381947498726

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Maynard, David. Paying Attention to the Alien: Reevaluating Composition Studies' Construction of Human Agency in Light of Secret Government Surveillance. 2017. University of Findlay, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=findlay149381947498726.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Maynard, David. "Paying Attention to the Alien: Reevaluating Composition Studies' Construction of Human Agency in Light of Secret Government Surveillance." Master's thesis, University of Findlay, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=findlay149381947498726

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)